Electronic bill presentation and payment method and system

ABSTRACT

A comprehensive electronic bill presentment and payment system and method is described. Bills can be received by the system, in any electronic format. Bills can also be received by the system through conventional paper-based channels. Paper bills are scanned and information is extracted from the scanned bill images using OCR techniques. Bill payments can be issued using either electronic or paper-based methods. A single electronic bill presentment and payment interface is provided which shields the user from evolving billing practices.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Consumer bill management has traditionally been an expensive process forboth consumers and billers. Consumers spend several hours a monthreviewing and filing bills, and coordinating payments for utility bills,credit card bills, mortgage payments, car loan payments, insurancepayments, etc.

The most common method of payment of the bills is writing paper checksfor the appropriate amounts and mailing the checks to the billers.Writing individual checks to pay each bill can be time-consuming andcostly due to postage and other related expenses.

The current methods of bill presentment and payment are also veryinefficient and expensive for the biller. It is a physical and paperintensive process, with the typical biller spending an estimated $0.75to $1.50 to simply print and mail a consumer's bill.

Every one of the over 100 million households in the United States is insome way involved with the process of receiving, approving and payingbills. The average household receives 12 regularly occurring bills,representing a significant part of the total domestic volume of over 15billion business-to-consumer bills created annually. The primary methodconsumers use to pay these bills is a paper bank check, which accountedfor approximately three quarters of all non-cash payments in 1997.

Convenience is one of the primary drivers for the adoption of newconsumer services today. Consumers find bill paying a time consuming,unpleasant task and there is a high level of consumer dissatisfactionwith the entire process. In essence, everyone pays bills, and almost noone likes doing it.

In response to the consumer need to provide greater convenience in thebill payment process, retail banks have provided a form of onlinebanking service that includes a bill payment function. Most of theseservices do not currently provide a bill presentation feature to theuser. Thus, the customer will still receive the bill in the mail thenenter payment amounts into the bank's system. This bill payment processis functionally equivalent to the conventional check writing process,the only difference being the elimination of the mailing of the physicalcheck.

Another proposed solution for providing greater convenience in the billpayment process is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,460. U.S. Pat. No.5,832,460 is directed to a method of electronically creating,presenting, paying and reconciling bills. In this process, the billerssend electronic messages to the electronic bill presenter. The billpresenter presents the bills for a customer, and the customer indicatesthe bills he wishes the bill presenter to pay and the amount of paymentsthrough payment authorizations. A message is presented to the customer'sbank, which then sends payment to the biller's bank. The biller's banksends a notification to the biller. The bill presenter also sends amessage indicating the reconciled payments to the biller for comparisonwith the payment notification message received from the biller's bank.

This bill payment process is highly dependent upon the existence ofbillers that send electronic bills to an electronic bill presenter. Thevast majority of billers today are unable to deliver electronic bills,and the methods and industry standards for electronic bill delivery arestill evolving. Additionally, some billers who are capable of electronicbill delivery are unwilling to send bills electronically. These billerswant ultimate control over the electronic release of their billinginformation due to privacy considerations (e.g., phone bills). In othercases, billers are unwilling to commit to electronic billing due to thelack of a universal industry standard for the transmission of billinginformation. The fragmentation within the market dictates that a unifiedstandards approach is unlikely to emerge, thereby limiting thepervasiveness of the electronic transmission of billing information.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention solves the problems of traditional bill processingby establishing one source for presentment and payment of all of aconsumer's bills. To provide this comprehensive bill presentment andpayment service, the system of the present invention receives bills bothelectronically and through the postal service. Electronic billinginformation can be received in any format from any biller. Accordingly,the system is not dependent upon the evolution of competing electronicbill transmission standards. Bills received through the postal serviceare scanned and summary billing information is extracted through use ofOptical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. The extracted summarydata is stored in a summary billing information database that alsostores the summary data that was received electronically. The scannedimages are stored in an images database.

In operation, the system of the present invention provides a userinterface that enables the presentation of all electronic or paper billsthat are received on behalf of the user. All bills are presented withinan inbox without distinguishing the origin of the various bills. In thismanner, changes within the billing practice of particular billers (e.g.changing from paper bills to electronic bills) are shielded from theuser. The user's perception does not change as the system of the presentinvention continues to operate as a single interface into the billingworld that contains ever changing billing practice. The user can alsosee detailed information about any bill. If the bill was receivedthrough electronic means, then the system will display all relevantinformation that is received. If the bill was received through thepostal service, a scanned image of the actual bill is presented. Asingle comprehensive presentation system is thereby achieved.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a furtherunderstanding of the invention and are incorporated in and constitute apart of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention thattogether with the description serve to explain the principles of theinvention.

In the drawings:

FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional bill presentation and payment process.

FIG. 2 illustrates a bill presentation and payment process according tothe present invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates the processing components used in the Electronic BillPresentation and Payment system of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart detailing the paper bill processing used in thepresent invention.

FIG. 5 illustrates a user interface for the electronic presentation andpayment process.

FIG. 6 illustrates a user interface for displaying detailed informationof a paper bill.

FIG. 7 illustrates a user interface for paying a bill electronically.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Reference will now be made in detail to the preferred embodiments of thepresent invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanyingdrawings.

The costs and inefficiencies of paper-based billing and payment havelong been recognized. Many attempts have been made over the years toreduce or eliminate the cost of billing and payment processing,including pay-by-phone, automatic credit card payment and automaticdirect payment. These initiatives have met with varying, but usuallylimited, degrees of consumer acceptance, due to their individual costsand technical limitations.

The Internet is recognized as having the potential to play a key role inthe development and proliferation of bill management systems. Currently,over 27% of US households have Internet access, either through directconnections with an Internet service provider, or through a proprietarysubscription service such as America Online. The percentage ofhouseholds with Internet access continues to grow at a phenomenal rate,and is expected to reach 56% by 2002.

The frequency and duration of connections by these users is alsoincreasing, as new services become available and consumers increase thetype of activities they perform online. Having made the investment toget online, consumers are looking to leverage this connection foractivities beyond searching, “surfing”, and chatting. Email is nearlyuniversal, used by 94% of the online population. This provides aready-made and familiar channel for communication with this community.

Internet access from the home is providing a new mechanism to deliverconsumer services in a highly interactive and cost effective manner,with the potential to fundamentally change how basic services aredelivered. Online consumer purchases, home banking, stock trades andauctions have all seen dramatic growth over the last 18 months asconsumers become more comfortable using the Internet for commercialactivities. The 1998 holiday season is powerful evidence of abreakthrough for online commerce, with a new wave of consumers embracingonline transactions.

The rising level of household Internet connectivity and regular usageprovides the potential ‘critical mass’ of consumers required tosuccessfully deliver new types of mass market services. The explosivegrowth of new service providers, such as the Internet auction houseeBay—which added over 1 million new users in the last year—highlight howrapidly innovative services are adopted by the Internet community.

The explosive growth of the Internet has created the perfect mechanismto automate information intensive services which have broad consumerimpact. Electronic bill presentation and payment (EBPP) is at the nexusof two powerful market drivers—convenience-driven consumers who areunsatisfied with the current methods of bill payment, and billers whoare desperate to automate this expensive process. Virtually everyorganization involved with billing or consumer finances is interested inthis market. Tremendous expansion is expected over the next few years.

Automation of the paper-based billing and check payment systems has longbeen an elusive goal for the industry. The emergence of the Internet hasspurred a great deal of activity over the last two years, with largebillers, billing service providers, software vendors, financialinstitutions and service companies all attempting to leverage the EBPPopportunity. Within this expansive and rapidly changing environment, theintroduction of new EBPP services is inevitably fragmented.

Various approaches of delivering EBPP can be utilized. Two basicapproaches are envisioned. One approach is the direct bill presentationmodel. The direct model envisions billers delivering their billinginformation to the consumer from their own internal Web site, or adedicated site managed by a billing service provider. This model wouldappeal to billers who are experimenting with the Internet as anextension of their customer care systems and who are attempting tomaintain the dominant position in the interaction with their customers.

The major disadvantage of the biller direct model is it is based on afundamentally flawed assumption. It assumes that the consumer will putup with the hassle and aggravation of visiting over a dozen differentweb sites, with different user-ids, passwords, notification methods,payment methods and user interfaces—simply to pay their bills. It hasbeen estimated that a consumer will put up with no more than twodifferent sites to find and pay their bills. It will be extremelydifficult for a biller-centric approach to be enticing to consumers,unless they are offered a financial incentive that would far outweighthe cost savings realized by the move to electronic billing in the firstplace.

Another approach is the electronic bill consolidator model. In theconsolidator model, a third-party processor collects billing informationfrom a number of billers for presentation to the consumer. In onepossible implementation, all of the billing information could be sent tothe consolidator, while in a second possible implementation, onlysummary information is sent to the consolidator for presentation, andthe consumer would link back to the biller's system to view details ofthe bill.

These consolidator models give an indication of the levels of confusionand contention that lead to the fragmented evolution of the market. Forexample, some billers want ultimate control over the electronic releaseof their billing information due to privacy considerations (e.g. phonebills). Their policies could ultimately shape a significant segment ofthe market. In another example, some billers are looking to outsourcethe billing process entirely. For them cost, not control, is the primaryconcern.

A consolidator's success will depend upon its success in attractingbillers into its network. The different strengths, relationships andconsolidation philosophies of the consolidator organizations will likelyguarantee that billers who choose to use a third-party consolidator willbe split across multiple consolidator networks. Competition between thevarious consolidators will contribute greatly to the fragmentation inthe market and will ultimately prevent the emergence of a singledominant consolidator. Thus, while these consolidators representpowerful forces in the market, their reach will be limited to thebillers and financial institutions that they can bring into theirnetworks.

All of the variants of the consolidator model are dependent onexchanging complex billing and enrollment information between billersand various third parties electronically. In order for the consolidatormodel to work, a universal industry standard for bill informationmanagement must be developed and accepted. As one can readilyappreciate, the standards process is a slow moving and bureaucraticprocess.

Any entity that has a product strategy that is entirely dependent on theemergence of an electronic standard is at the mercy of the marketadoption rate. Evolutional risks are also a concern. It is important tonote that billing information, particularly the detail, is inherentlycomplex and varies greatly from industry to industry, and vendor tovendor. Experience thus far has proven that it is not a simple processfor multiple parties to manage and transmit billing information, even ifit is presented in a “standards” based format. The inability of aunified standards approach emerging will likely limit the pervasivenessand hence the effectiveness of the consolidators.

The presentation and payment of bills requires the combination ofcapabilities currently performed by a number of different types oforganizations, and there is no natural provider of a unified service intoday's market. Billers can only present their own billing content,banks can only provide payment services for their own customers, andconsolidators are dependent on the billers that choose to join theirnetwork.

Despite all of the industry efforts and alliances to date, widespreadconsumer adoption of EBPP will not be achieved until consumers canaccess and pay a significant number of their bills from a singlelocation. Consumers have proven extremely resistant to having to managemultiple Web locations, user interfaces and security systems simply topay their bills.

The fragmentation within the bill management industry will likelycontinue for the foreseeable future as the industry rapidly evolves.This fragmentation will ultimately limit the rate of adoption of EBPP byconsumers, who are looking for a truly convenient system. Significantly,conventional bill management systems cannot manage all of a consumer'sbills. Consumers will still receive at least some of their bills throughthe mail. Accordingly, consumers will still have to write checks andmail remittances for at least some of their bills.

As shown in FIG. 1, a consumer 110 who wishes to see and pay billselectronically may have to communicate with a number of differentsources to see and pay all of his bills. Some billers may have their ownWeb site 120-1 to 120-N through which they present bills to theircustomers and receive payment. However, they are only capable ofpresenting bills and receiving payments on their own accounts. Otherbillers may have agreements with an electronic bill consolidator 130-1to 130-N to which they electronically send customer billing information.Consolidators 130-1 to 130-N gather these bills and present them to theconsumer on that consolidator's Web site. Consolidators 130-1 to 130-Nmay also have the ability to receive payment from consumers, but onlyfor those bills that they present to the consumers. For those billersthat do not support some form of electronic billing, the only avenuesfor bill presentation and payment is through the U.S. Postal Service140.

Personal Finance Management (PFM) software 150, such as Microsoft Moneyand Intuit Quicken, is capable of making bill payments to any biller.Most PFM software currently does not support on-line bill presentation.PFM software that does provide bill presentation does so on a limitedbasis. For instance, Quicken is currently limited to presenting billsfor only seven billers. In general, a consumer may only use the softwareas an “electronic checkbook” to provide payment through the consumer'sbank.

Additionally, many banks 160 provide online banking services includingbill payment. Like PFM software, most of these online banking servicesdo not provide bill presentation. Banks can provide limited billpresentation features through partnership channels such as Checkfree.For both PFM software and online banking services, typically theconsumer still receives bills in the mail and enters payment into thePFM software or online banking system—the same activities as writing acheck, simply eliminating the mailing of the physical check.

An additional problem faced by PFM software and online banking users isthe potential delay in the posting of a bill payment. Most billers relyon payment remittance stubs that are included in the paper bill to bereturned with the remittance to ensure proper payment to that customer'saccount. These systems simply send a check for the customer, with noremittance stub. Therefore, the biller has to manually determine whichaccount to credit payment. This is costly for the biller, and usuallyresults in a delay in receiving the funds. Additionally, the customermay also be hurt if the delay in posting a payment results in a latefee.

Both online banking and PFM software providers face the same issues forimplementing electronic bill presentation. They are basing their futurebill presentation strategies on receiving all billing informationelectronically from one or more third-parties. As noted, the success ofthis strategy depends on the eventual industry evolution ofstandards-based formats. Given the nature of shrink-wrap commercialsoftware, the emergence of a standard universal delivery format is mostlikely the only option for successfully receiving billing informationinto their packages. Until all billers are capable of, and desire to,deliver billing information in an industry standard format, onlinebanking and PFM software will remain incapable of providing a billpresentation and payment system for all of a consumer's bills.

Therefore, a need exists for a comprehensive bill payment system to beavailable to any consumer, regardless of where the consumer banks andregardless of what bills are to be paid. This comprehensive system mustbe able is to present and make payment for all of a consumer's bills. Aless than comprehensive system will likely suffer the unfortunate fateof an inevitably outmoded piece of a continuously evolving fragmentedsystem.

The system of the present invention solves this patchwork system ofelectronic billers 120-1 to 120-N, traditional billers, PFM 150,electronic banking services 160 and electronic bill consolidators 130-1to 130-N by introducing a true EBPP system 200 that interacts with allof these sources, as shown in FIG. 2. The Paytrust Bill Center 200 actsas the sole source of electronically presenting the consumer's bills,and the sole source for bill payment for the consumer. Consumers whosubscribe to the service will receive all of their bills in a single “inbox”, without regard to how they were processed or delivered.

The establishment of a single system for EBPP addresses a significantmarket need. The present invention is not dependent upon the currentstate of evolution within the bill management market. In particular, thepresent invention is not dependent on the progress within the standardsprocess, the level of acceptance of the various competing consolidatormodels or the attitudes of individual billers. The EBPP system of thepresent invention is designed to flexibly interoperate with an industrythat will remain fragmented for years to come. It is a feature of thepresent invention that the consumer will be shielded from the evolutionof the bill management process. From the consumer's perspective, EBPPwill be addressed consistently via one source.

The processing components used in the EBPP system of the presentinvention are shown in FIG. 3. Personal Computer (PC) 300 is used by aconsumer who subscribes to the system to access a communicationsnetwork, such as the Internet, 310. PC 300 can be a convention personalcomputer that includes a microprocessor (not shown); memory (not shown)for storing data and standard online service software that includes aWeb browser, such as America Online; modem 305 for establishing acommunications link to the network; display 307; keyboard 309 and mouse313. PC 300 connects to network 310 through use of the online servicesoftware.

The Paytrust Bill Center 200 is also connected to network 310. In oneembodiment, Paytrust Bill Center 200 includes one or more servercomputers 365, scanner 350, image database 370, bill detail database 372and billing summary information database 375. Server computer 365contains network communications software for interfacing with consumerPC 300 over the network 310.

Bill Center 200 is the single source for receiving and paying thesubscriber consumer's bills. As shown in FIG. 3, Bill Center 200 canreceive both electronic bills 330 and paper bills 340.

Electronic bills 330 can be received on magnetic tapes or optical disksthat are sent to Bill Center 200, or can be received through a downloadover a private communications network. Electronic bills can also bereceived over public communication network 310. The Paytrust system doesnot depend on any particular format, and will accept electronic billinginformation from a third-party in any of the various competingstandards, such as OFX, IFX or EDI, or even a biller-specificproprietary format. Unlike bill consolidators 130-1 to 130-N who requirebillers to conform to their standard, the Paytrust system is not tied tothe development or acceptance of a particular standard.

As noted previously, billers vary greatly as to how much informationthey will send electronically. Some billers will only send the basicsummary information. Others will send extensive detailed informationthat may include very complex data. However, all billers will send atleast the same basic summary information that is common to all bills.This data can include bill receipt date, bill due date, total amountdue, minimum amount due, account number and the consumer's name andaddress. Once electronic bills are received at Bill Center 200, thisstandard summary data is extracted and stored in Billing SummaryInformation database 375. This database contains summary informationthat is common to all bills, whether electronic or paper-based. Anyelectronic billing data received that is not included in the BillingSummary Information database 375 is stored in the Bill Detail database372.

Bill Center 200 also receives paper bills 340 from billers. The abilityto seamlessly receive paper bills into the system is a critical feature,as the substantial majority of bills will continue to be paper for theforeseeable future. Many billers are not yet capable of sending bills inelectronic format, or they may not be capable of receiving electronicpayments. Other billers who have the capability choose not to doelectronic billing, so that they retain control over their is billinginformation and process (e.g. privacy reasons). The conventionalsolution that requires electronic billing information in a standardformat attempts to eliminate the current paper-based billing processthat most billers currently use. Unlike these systems, the presentinvention does not attempt to eliminate the current paper-based billingprocess, but rather seeks to incorporate the current paper-based billingprocess into its system. Moreover, unlike other bill consolidatingsystems, billers need do nothing to participate in the present system.Thus, the present comprehensive system provides seamless integration ofthe current paper-based billing process into the EBPP process.

When the consumer subscribes to the Paytrust system, paper-based billersare notified that a subscriber's bills are to be mailed to the PaytrustBill Center 200. It is a feature of the present invention that thesubscribing consumer never has to deal with receiving, opening andfiling any paper bills. Whether a particular biller is capable of orchooses to implement electronic billing makes no difference to theconsumer. The consumer need not be aware of whether Paytrust receivestheir bills electronically or through the mail. If a biller decides tostart billing electronically in the future, the consumer need donothing. The Paytrust Bill Center will work with the biller to switchfrom paper billing to electronic billing.

The operation of receiving and processing paper bills is shown in theflowchart of FIG. 4. When paper bills 340 are received at Bill Center200, they are counted and separated, at step 410. This may be doneeither by a Paytrust employee or through the use of an envelope jogger.Obvious unnecessary material is removed, and the remaining contents ofthe bill envelope are identified as a bill, a notice or an importantdocument at step 415. Bills and notices are scanned at step 425 andimportant documents are forwarded to the customer at step 430.

Billing information is then extracted from the scanned images using atwo-step OCR process. First, the type of bill is identified during afirst pass. Then, using a predefined template for the type of billidentified, the billing information is extracted. Using software toidentify the bill type is important, because conventional OCR paperhandling processes involve an extremely expensive and time consuming‘prep’ stage, with documents identified and sorted by hand beforescanning. The two-step OCR process of the present invention avoids thismanual processing, thereby allowing Paytrust to efficiently handle awide range of documents.

In the first step, the type of bill is identified. Every type of billshould have a list of numeric identifiers that uniquely identify it.These can include bill payment ZIP Codes, PO Box Numbers, contact PhoneNumbers or even form numbers that are sometimes listed on the bottomcorner of bills. At step 440, a full image OCR which treats allinformation as one big zone with a default conversion of numeric isperformed on the first page of a bill. The converted information fromthe full image OCR is searched for these numeric identifiers, and ifenough are found, then the type of bill can be identified at step 450.

Every type of bill has an associated template file that contains zoneinformation for locating the required billing summary data and paymentremittance stub on the paper bill. This template file may be constructedmanually through any text editor program or through use of a graphicaltemplate constructor tool. One example of a graphical templateconstructor is PRVIEW by Prime Recognition. The required billing summarydata zones include bill date, bill amount, minimum due, due date,account number and consumer name and address. Once the type of bill isidentified, then another OCR of the bill image is performed using thistemplate to extract the billing summary information at step 470. Animage of the payment remittance stub is also extracted from the scannedbill image(s) so that it can be stored as a separate image.

If the bill is from a biller that is new to the system, then an operatoris called upon to determine identifying characteristics about the billand determine where on the bill the required summary information andremittance stub are located at step 460. This information is saved in anew template, so that the next time any bill is received from thatparticular biller, the system will be able to automatically identify thetype of bill and extract summary information.

The system also performs validation at step 480 to ensure that amountsand due dates seem reasonable. Any bills that fail the validation checkare flagged and an operator is called upon to manually verifycorrectness at step 485.

The scanned images are stored in the Images Database 370. Preferably,one image is stored for every page of the bill along with a separateimage for the payment remittance stub. Once the billing summaryinformation is extracted from the scanned bills, it is stored in BillingSummary Information database 375. Therefore, the Billing SummaryInformation Database 375 contains summary information for all bills,whether the bills were sent electronically to Paytrust or mailed toPaytrust in the form of paper bills. Once the information is stored inthe Billing Summary Information Database 375, it is transparent as tohow the information was originally received—by paper or electronically.

Bill Center 200 can make payment on all of the consumer's bills. Asshown in FIG. 3, these payments may be in the form of an electronicpayment 380. Preferably, electronic payments are made using theAutomated Clearing House (ACH) network, but any financial network can beused. Other examples of financial networks include the Automated TellerMachine (ATM) network and the Visa or MasterCard network.

Payments can also be made in the form of a paper check 390 drafted bythe system. If the system cuts a paper check, it will also print theimage of the biller's payment remittance stub to send along with thepaper check to the biller. Delivering the printed remittance stub makesthe biller's acceptance of the payment much more efficient, saving thebiller significant costs in exception processing. The consumer will havea dramatically reduced risk of late fees from the biller due topotential processing delays in posting payment to the customer'saccount. Preferably, the payment remittance stub is printed on the samepiece of paper as the paper check, reducing processing fees evenfurther.

Basically, the type of payment made by the system depends on the biller.It is completely transparent to the user which type of payment is made.

As noted, a key feature of the present invention is the provision of asingle, comprehensive EBPP system. Consumers are not required tointeract with multiple Websites in combination with traditionalpaper-based billing channels. Rather, all EBPP functions areincorporated into a single Website that can accommodate all of aconsumer's bills regardless of origin and delivery methodology.

The consumer communicates with the comprehensive Paytrust Bill Center200 by using standard online software to access the Paytrust Web site.Once the user logs into the system, he is presented a “bill inbox” and a“payment outbox”, as shown in FIG. 5.

The inbox shows the bills for that user that have been received byPaytrust, but have not yet been paid. Through the comprehensive designof the Paytrust Bill Center 200, the inbox is designed to contain allbills received by Paytrust, whether they were received electronically orthrough the mail. The inbox provides seamless integration of billpresentment to the user—the user cannot tell and does not care how thebills were received by Paytrust. If a biller switches from paper toelectronic billing, it will not affect the user's perception. Eitherway, the user sees all unpaid bills in one inbox.

The user can then display more detailed information about any bill byclicking on the magnifying glass button. This will cause the system todisplay more detailed information about the bill. FIG. 6 is an exampleof a bill that is shown to the consumer. The detailed bill in FIG. 6 isactually the paper bill that was scanned by the Paytrust Bill Center. Ifthe bill were received electronically, then a form showing detailedinformation would be shown to the user. The summary information (duedate, amount due, account number, etc.) shown at the top of FIG. 6 isthe identical whether the bill were received electronically or throughthe mail. If the bill was received electronically, the summaryinformation is extracted from the electronic communications. If the billwas received through the mail, the summary information is extractedusing the scanning and OCR process described above.

The user can choose to pay a bill by clicking on the “$” button. Thiswill cause the system to display a screen like the one shown in FIG. 7.In this screen, the user fills out the “check” for payment. Once theuser approves the check, then the bill is moved to the outbox. Theoutbox shows all bills that have been paid by the Paytrust system.

The Paytrust system is capable of paying all of a consumer's bills,whether payments can be made electronically on not. Depending on thebiller, the system either makes an electronic payment, or it drafts apaper check and mails it to the biller along with the remittance stub.Therefore, the biller will receive remittances just as if the consumerhad made the payment.

While the invention has been described in detail and with reference tospecific embodiments thereof, it will be apparent to one skilled in theart that various changes and modifications can be made therein withoutdeparting from the spirit and scope thereof. It is intended that thepresent invention cover the modifications and variations of thisinvention provided they come within the scope of the appended claims andtheir equivalents.

We claim:
 1. A method of electronically presenting bills for a customer,comprising: subscribing the customer to a bill presentment system forreceiving electronic bills and paper bills for the customer; notifying aplurality of billers that the customer has subscribed to the billpresentment system, the billers including electronic-based billers andpaper-based billers; receiving, at a location, an electronic bill and apaper bill for the customer from one of the billers; scanning the paperbill received for the customer to generate electronic image information;extracting first optical character recognition (OCR) data from theelectronic image information by treating the electronic imageinformation as a single zone; searching the first OCR data for at leastone numeric identifier of a type of the scanned paper bill; identifyingthe type of the scanned paper bill by comparing the at least one numericidentifier to a list of types stored in a memory; extracting second OCRdata from the electronic image information using a templatecorresponding to the identified bill type, wherein the template includeszone information for locating portions of the billing information;extracting billing information from the second OCR data; comparing theextracted billing information with known information; based on thecomparison, combining the electronic bill and the extracted billinginformation into a customer bill presentation; and presenting thecustomer bill presentation to the customer.
 2. The method of claim 1,further comprising the steps of: removing material other than billinginformation from the received paper bill; forwarding documents from thereceived paper bill to the customer; receiving a payment instructionfrom the customer; and sending payment according to the paymentinstruction.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the sending comprisesprinting a physical check drawing funds from an account of the customer.4. The method of claim 3, further comprising printing a stored scannedimage of a remittance stub.
 5. The method of claim 2, wherein thesending comprises of submitting an electronic payment.
 6. The method ofclaim 5, wherein the sending comprises submitting an electronic paymentusing one of an automated clearing house network, an automated tellermachine network, or a credit card network.
 7. The method of claim 1,wherein scanning further comprises: extracting billing information fromthe electronic image information using optical character recognition andthe predefined template; and extracting an image of a payment remittancestub from the paper bill.
 8. The method of claim 1, further comprisingpresenting an electronic image of a paper bill upon receipt of a requestfrom the customer.
 9. A method of electronically presenting and payingpaper bills for a customer, comprising: receiving and processing a paperbill in a location for the customer; identifying the contents of thereceived paper bill; scanning the received paper bill to generateelectronic image information; extracting first optical characterrecognition (OCR) data from the electronic image information by treatingthe electronic image information as a single zone; searching the firstOCR data for at least one numeric identifier of a type of the scannedpaper bill; identifying the type of the scanned paper bill by comparingthe at least one numeric identifier to a list of types stored in amemory; extracting second OCR data from the electronic image informationusing a template corresponding to the identified bill type, wherein thetemplate includes zone information for locating portions of the billinginformation; extracting billing information from the second OCR data;validating the extracted billing information; extracting an image of apayment remittance stub from the paper bill; and presenting theextracted billing information to the customer.
 10. The method of claim9, wherein the type of bill is identified using numeric identifierswithin the paper bill.
 11. The method of claim 9, further comprising:printing a physical check drawing funds from an account of the customer.12. The method of claim 11, further comprising printing a stored scannedimage of a remittance stub.
 13. A method of electronically presentingand paying paper bills for a customer, comprising: receiving a paperbill at a location for the customer; identifying the contents of thepaper bill; scanning the received paper bill to generate electronicimage information; extracting first optical character recognition (OCR)data from the electronic image information by treating the electronicimage information as a single zone; searching the first OCR data for atleast one numeric identifier of a type of the scanned paper bill;identifying the type of the scanned paper bill by comparing the at leastone numeric identifier to a list of types stored in a memory; extractingsecond OCR data from the electronic image information using a templatecorresponding to the identified bill type, wherein the template includeszone information for locating portions of the billing information;extracting billing information from the second OCR data; validating theextracted billing information; extracting an image of a paymentremittance stub from the paper bill; storing the extracted image of thepayment remittance stub; presenting the extracted billing information tothe customer; receiving a payment instruction from the customer;printing a paper check drawing funds from an account of the customer inresponse to the received payment instruction; and printing the storedscanned image of the remittance stub for the paper bill.
 14. The methodof claim 13, comprising automatically extracting the billinginformation.
 15. The method of claim 14, wherein the extracting billinginformation comprises: extracting billing information from zones thatare pre-defined for the type of paper bill.
 16. A system forelectronically presenting and paying bills for a customer comprising: acomputer; and a storage medium containing instructions which, whenexecuted by the computer, perform a method comprising: subscribing acustomer to a bill presentment system for receiving electronic bills andpaper bills for the customer; notifying a plurality of billers that thecustomer has subscribed to the bill presentment system, the billersincluding electronic-based billers and paper-based billers; receiving anelectronic bill for the customer; receiving a paper bill for thecustomer; scanning the received paper bill to generate electronic imageinformation; extracting first optical character recognition (OCR) datafrom the electronic image information by treating the electronic imageinformation as a single zone; searching the first OCR data for at leastone numeric identifier of a type of the scanned paper bill; identifyingthe type of the scanned paper bill by comparing the at least one numericidentifier to a list of types stored in a memory; extracting second OCRdata from the electronic image information using a templatecorresponding to the identified bill type, wherein the template includeszone information for locating portions of the billing information;extracting billing information from the second OCR data; validating theextracted billing information; and transmitting to the customerinformation representing the electronic bill and the extracted billinginformation.
 17. The system of claim 16, wherein the method furthercomprises: receiving a payment instruction from the customer to pay abill; drafting a payment drawing funds from an account of the customer;and sending the payment to a biller that originated the bill.
 18. Thesystem of claim 17, wherein the method further comprises printing aphysical check drawing funds from the account.
 19. The system of claim18, wherein the method further comprises printing a stored scanned imageof a remittance stub.
 20. The system of claim 17, wherein the draftingcomprises submitting an electronic payment.
 21. The system of claim 20,wherein the submitting comprises submitting an electronic payment usingat least one of an automated clearing house network, a automated tellermachine network, or a credit card network.
 22. The system of claim 16,wherein the method further comprises extracting billing information fromthe electronic image information using optical character recognition.23. The system of claim 16, wherein the method further comprisestransmitting an electronic image of a paper bill upon receipt of arequest from the customer.